After a devastating earthquake killed more than 35,000 people in Turkey and Syria, many volunteer software developers are using a key Twitter tool to scour the microblogging site for help – including from people trapped in collapsed buildings – and people Including linking up with rescue organizations.
People may lose access unless they pay at least a $100 monthly fee to the platform, as Twitter Will end free access to its API, or application programming interface.
A fee of $100 per month would be prohibitive for many volunteers and nonprofits on a shoestring budget.
Sedat Kapanoglu, founder of Eksi Sözlük, one of Turkey’s most popular social forums, who is mentoring some of the volunteers in their efforts, said, “It is not just the rescue efforts that unfortunately we are ending. but also for logistics planning because people go to Twitter to broadcast their needs.”
Nonprofits, researchers, and others need API tools to analyze Twitter data because the sheer volume of information makes it impossible for a human to go through it by hand.
Eksi Sozluk’s founder said hundreds of “good Samaritans” are offering their own, premium paid API access keys (Twitter already offered a paid version with more features) for use in rescue efforts.
However, he believes that this is not a “sustainable or correct way” to do so. It may also be against Twitter’s policies.
Twitter is shutting down free access to its API
Monday is the deadline the platform has set for shutting down free access to its API, which adds an additional challenge to the many developers in Turkey and beyond who are working endlessly to harness Twitter’s unique, open ecosystem for disaster relief. are doing.
The confirmed death toll now stands at 35,331 as officials and doctors said 31,643 were killed in Turkey and around 3,688 in Syria.
Akin Unvar, a professor of international relations at Ozygin University in Istanbul, said, “For Turkish coders working with the Twitter API for disaster monitoring purposes, this is particularly worrying — and I think it will be true for other countries around the world.” Equally worrying for people who are using Twitter data to monitor emergencies and politically contentious events.”
The new $100-a-month fee for programmers, academics and others trying to use AP is just the latest complication — and they say it has become essentially impossible to communicate with anyone at the firm since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022.
Musk has long said he wants to scour the microblogging site of bots, and has said that charging a minimum of $100 a month to access the API would “clean things up a lot.”
The API paywall is the Twitter boss’ latest attempt to squeeze revenue from the platform, which is on the hook for nearly $1 billion in annual interest payments from its acquisition of the billionaire last year.
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